Virtual reality center takes off

Published: Thursday, November 11, 1999

KARA ALTENBAUMERAvalanche-Journal

Members of the citizen's advisory committee for Texas Tech's Institute for Environmental and Human Health took a dizzying ride through cyberspace Wednesday, jetting across the globe from the tip of Africa through Italy and to the snow covered peaks of Europe during the first trip of a new virtual reality center.

Center operators took the multi-million dollar equipment on an inaugural test drive that included a model of a sports car as they worked the bugs out on the system that should help answer some of environmental science's toughest and most dangerous questions.

''This is a very powerful tool,'' said Ron Kendall, institute director. ''There will literally be thousands of pieces of information'' involved in the problems the machine will tackle.

The virtual reality center is run by the only supercomputer in West Texas a machine that comes close to ranking in the top 200 computing sites in the world, Kendall said. The panoramic technology in the center is the biggest in Texas and is believed to the biggest in any university setting in the United States, he said.

The system ''is highly accomplished and world renowned in graphics and visualization,'' Kendall said.

One committee member described the computer as a library.

''That's exactly right,'' Kendall said. ''With the massiveness of data storage on this computer, we will create libraries of information. As we address new questions, we will go back and mine our libraries.''

Housed at Reese along with the institute will be the National Center for Countermeasures to Chemical and Biological Threats, which will be a major user of the virtual reality center and supercomputer.

The technology can be used to answer questions about how to address a terrorist attack without using dangerous agents or humans for testing, Tech scientists have said.

The threat of a chemical or biological attack has become a central focus from meetings of the nation's top scientists to the Pentagon. The national center was funded by Congress just last month to help address the issue.

Plans for a high-level laboratory that can handle bioterrorism agents are also in the works at Reese.